With her hand on the door knob, she paused. She could hear Paul's voice from below stairs, where he and the aunt and uncle sat in
the library, and she heard a clock begin to strike 11. She opened the door and entered. <The grandmother>

The grandmother was sitting in a low chair beside the littered dressing table, the ebony stick leaning against the table. Her arms were folded.
She sat motionless, not even rocking, looking at the door when it opened and Corinthia entered and crossed the room.

She spoke in a cold level voice. "Not content with deceiving your mother, and your prospective husband, you must bring a negro into
my son's house as a guest."

"Grandmother!" Corinthia whispered.

"Expect me to sit down to the table with a negro."

"Grandmother!" Upon the stairs she could hear feet, and her aunt's voice, cold, pleasant, outraged. She made a thin [wringing?] [illegible]
with her hand. "Hush!" she cried in a thin whisper. "Hush!"

"What? What did you say?"

Corinthia leaned and laid her fingers on the grandmother's lips, and, the one furiously importunate and the other furiously cold, the two
pairs of eyes glared at one another across the hand while the feet, the voices, passed the door and went on and ceased.

From a row of them wedged into the mirror frame Corinthia pulled a program card to which was attached by a colored silken cord
a tiny futile pencil. In a drawer she found a pack of letters. She took one and wrote on the back of the envelope:

He is not a negro. He went to Virginia and Harvard and everywhere

The grandmother read it. <"Look at the roots of his hair," she said> "I can understand Harvard, but not Virginia," she said. "Look at
the roots of his hair. Any fool could tell it. If I needed any more proof, I'd have only to examine his fingernails one time. But I dont
require any. I know his people. I know the name they have borne for 3 generations." She returned the envelope. "That man
must not stay under this roof."

Corinthia took another envelope. He shall. He is my guest. I asked him here. You are my grandmother, you would not have me treat any
guest that way. Not even a dog

The grandmother read it. She sat with the envelope in her hand. "I will not put foot in that car. And you shall not. We will go
home on the train. No blood of mine shall ride in that car again. <You> And you.
[margin: You, a woman engaged to be married, whose father has given you every advantage. <We that> This is the man
your father ordered out of the house once, isn't it? And now you slip out at daylight to make a 300 mile journey with him, telling
your mother that it is the man you are engaged to marry.]
<Your father ordered him out of the house once.>

Corinthia took another envelope. I will. You cant stop me. Try and stop me.

The grandmother read it. She looked at Corinthia, her eyes black and still, Corinthia with a fresh envelope, the pencil already poised. <"Then I will have
to tell your mother> "Then I will have to tell your mother."

Corinthia wrote swiftly, thrusting the envelope across the table in the same motion that lifted the pencil; then she tried to snatch
grandmother held it. They looked at one another. "Turn it loose," the grandmother said.

"No," Corinthia said; "wait." She tugged at the envelope, twisting it. "I made a mist— "

The grandmother <turned> bent the envelope; Corinthia snatched at it again, but the grandmother had already read it. "Ah," she said. She read
aloud: "Tell her. What do you know" She looked at Corinthia. "So?" she said. "What do I know?"

"Yes," Corinthia whispered; "tell her. Tell her we went into a clump of bushes, across a field. It was just after sunup. When we came out
there was a man plowing in the field. He knew what we had been doing. Tell her! Tell her!"
[margin: But Paul didn't want to. I made him. He didn't want to stop. Tell her that.]
The grandmother let the envelope go. She
rose, <and took up the stick.> "Grandmother —" Corinthia said.

"Give me my stick. There. Against the wall."